Paper Heart
by I'm Not Greek
Summary: When Bella dies, Renesmee finds her diaries and journals following her life and decides to read them to finally understand and connect with her mother one last final time. AH


Chapter One -

I scrambled through the attic reluctantly, carrying on like an empty shell, the one that I had been for some time now. It had been three months since my mother – Bella Swan, had died and now that the funeral and everything had passed, Forks was returning back to normal and Dad had decided that the best way to move along with it was to connect with my mother. She often kept diaries and so if I could find one, I was allowed to read it. I wasn't sure I wanted to.

I pulled out a small box that was hidden in a corner – some place mum would put it so that it wasn't regularly pulled out and all her secrets revealed. I tore open the box and there lay at least seven or eight diaries, some looking more dishevelled than others. I shakily placed my hand on the oldest looking one – it was faded, but red with black and white flowers over it. It wasn't a soft back book, but it wasn't hard-back either. The bind had been ruined by being opened countless times and it refused to shut completely flat anymore without the assistance of other books squashing it shut.

I didn't want to leave the attic now; I wanted to read this privately. Although I was allowed to read it, I felt like it was still a massive secret that I was being let in on – I knew that even Dad hadn't been allowed to read them. So I got up and placed myself in the big squishy chair that sunk in when you sat down. I opened it gently and looked at the first page. In her little untidy scrawl, it said:

_Bella Swan – 17 years old. _

Mum had always kept diaries, this was the youngest one that she had actually stored and brought along with her wherever she went. I turned the page for a diary entry.

_Friday 24__th__ February_

_Okay, so I don't have anything to say. I bought this diary/journal thing today and I'm more terrified that someone is going to read it than actually putting anything decent in it. _

I laughed, but it was more like a sad wheeze of a laugh than a healthy one. It sounded like Mum to be more worried about unwanted noses in her diary than what she was going to put in it. I got a tissue out of my pocket and wiped my nose – it was clamming up with dust. The attic needed a serious clean.

_Monday 27__th__ February_

_Today has been a confusing day. I'll start at the beginning and see where I can go from there. I got up, got ready, went to college, realised my bum looked good in these jeans and drank my hot chocolate after a cold walk to college. _

Mum had been in England at the time that she went to college – it's how she met Dad actually. He stuck out like a sore thumb because he was an American and she had spent so long in England that she had an English accent herself.

_I sat outside the English classroom and pretty soon, Jessica and Edward appeared and started to talk to me. They were in my lessons too. Then later, Faith arrived. Faith has become my confidante, someone I can talk to because, as much as I love Jess and know that she's a good friend, she loves Edward as much as everyone else and can't seem to see beyond the idea that he is 'simply wonderful'. Faith is the only person who can see that he isn't the most amazing person in the entire world whilst still being a close friend of his. I talk to her when he upsets me because he insults me day in and day out and I never understand what our friendship is based on. Today he told me on the way home when I exclaimed 'why do I talk to you?' that 'You don't really talk to me. I talk and you give a reaction.' _

Mum told me about this once; she said that usually her reactions were ones of disgust or disbelief because the things he said were unbelievable or simply vile in a way that made her laugh even when she didn't want to.

_The insults are starting to hurt my feelings. I do it back, but he is so much more confident in himself than I am, so they don't seem to bother him. I'm probably just another person who enjoys his company to him. _

She wasn't. She never had been. Dad had always liked Mum from the first time she sat near him in their English class where he could see her face properly and listen to her voice. He said that she was very shy, it took her a while to get involved in their group of friends, but it was her big, brown eyes that first attracted him to her. But she'd been right about the first thing, Dad always appeared to be more confident in himself than her. She was always the more shy of the two when they were in public.

_I feel like I'm self-harming around him. It's awful to be around Edward, yet I can't stay away. I hate spending time in his company. He's loud when he speaks – which is all the time, he never shuts up – he makes me sad, angry and incredibly confused, but at the same time there are all the good things. It is the time that I spend with him that I remember most from my day at college and despite all the negative, he's funny, he's charming, when he smiles he cheers me up and lifts my spirits and his laugh is so contagious, I can't help but join in even if I don't want to. His accent is lovely to listen to, too. The negative doesn't even come until after Edward is gone. I sound like such a melt, but that's how it is. _

I was told by Dad that a 'melt' was someone who was incredibly soppy and a bit sickly sweet to the point that they make others cringe. I googled it to get a proper definition and what came up was:

'an absolute complete fucking idiot'.

Sounds about right to me.

_I had a mock sociology exam today. It was horrific, I could have sat and cried right there for the whole hour and a half. Sitting in that seat and listening to the sound of the clock ticking in the background, all I kept thinking about was how much I didn't know and this made me panic and forget everything that I actually did know! _

I panicked as one of my own silly tears dropped onto the page. I didn't want to ruin it. How reflective it was, and how much it showed how similar my mum and I actually were was scary. She had been the same age as I am now when she wrote this, and this was the deepest connection I had ever had with my mum. I didn't want to ruin any part of it by staining it with salt water tears.

_I finished so early in the exam that I started writing things on separate pieces of paper that made me feel awful. I told myself how stupid I was over and over in different hand-writing, imagining who it was that wrote like that that was telling me these things. I thought that I was the only one, but when I finished and was talking to everyone else outside the class, it turned out that other people finished too early and had no idea what to write either. I decided that was the last time that I don't revise properly for an exam – mock or otherwise. Even for a subject that I hate with a passion._

I couldn't read anymore tonight. The clenching in my stomach that I was feeling was telling me that I needed to throw up. These journals had once been Mum's private thoughts. But Mum didn't have private thoughts anymore, she didn't have private anything. She was dead. She was gone. These were all that I have left of her.

**This is just a taster to see what people think of it. Obviously if it doesn't get any traffic or reviews then there won't be much point continuing really. I've had other stories without much success so I really want to concentrate on this one. **


End file.
